🇪🇪 Monzo in Estonia [Wiki]

This is a wiki crowdsourced by the Monzo Community to help you travel with Monzo.

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Safe travels! :wave: :airplane:


Currency

Euro, €, EUR

Card usage

Some retailers will accept contactless payments but in many you will need to enter your PIN.

Normally for most transactions you will get a standard till receipt but in certain outlets such as dentists and hardware stores you may get a large page that like a guarantee/warranty and receipt combined which they may sign and stamp.

Unlike the UK where small shops and cafés will only take cash for small transactions and have a minimum card spend this does not seem an issue in Estonia. If a retailer accepts cards they tend to take them for any amount, so even if you just getting a coffee and cake you can pop it on your card without difficulty.

ATMs

Many Estonian banks are owned by or subsidiaries of Finnish or Swedish banks and their machines accept both local and foreign MasterCards and Visa cards.

Some ATMs as well as set amounts and an ‘other’ option will have a button for ‘small change’ which will vend the same amount of cash but with more smaller denomination notes rather than a few higher denomination ones

All ATMs provide the option to select English from a language menu

Finding an ATM is easy but the local banks do have ATM finders on their websites, e.g.:

NORDEA
http://kaart.nordea.ee/?lang=en&ps=5

SWEDBANK
https://www.swedbank.ee/private/home/more/channels (select region on map to view)

Payment and withdrawal limits

In the event that you do use Contactless payment the limit is €25 (from 16 Oct 2017, previously it was only €10) and any payments above this will require the entry of a PIN.

Very few merchants use offline machines and almost every transaction posted immediately.

Crowdsourced merchant data

One Monzo user found that the accuracy of the crowd sourced data (for their spending pattern) was a bit off, with only about 50% of the smaller stores being accurate.

However another Monzo user disagrees and has made numerous card transactions in Estonia (both contactless and chip and pin) in small merchants like cafés etc and ALL had both merchant name and address correct and indeed expenditure category correct too. Only thing of note is merchant name will often be Town name and Shop name or Shop name and Street street name (as they have on their regular receipts) think like Stansted W H Smith rather than W H Smith or W H Smith High Street rather than W H Smith. Only thing missing from most transactions seems to be a contact phone number for a merchant - but unless you speak Estonian that probably not much use anyway.

Miscellaneous

Most major taxi firms like Tulika Taxi will take card payments.

It’s perfectly possible to use your card at every opportunity even in the smallest shops.


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1 Like

Sorry for posting this quite late. Estonian shops generally accept Monzo without minimum limits, except when the stores are cash-only. This was during my trip there in June 2018.